[828] Andrew’s Practice of Inoculation impartially considered. Exeter, 1765, p. 60.
[829] Duvillard (Analyse et Tableaux de l’Influence de la Petite Vérole sur la Mortalité à chaque Age. Paris, 1806) gives the ages at which 6792 persons died of smallpox at Geneva from 1580 to 1760, according to the registers of burials:
| Total at all ages. | 0-1, | -2, | -3, | -4, | -5, | -6, | -7, | -8, | -9, | -10, | -15, | -20, | -25, | -30. | ||||||||||||||
| 6792 | 1376 | 1300 | 1290 | 898 | 603 | 381 | 301 | 189 | 109 | 78 | 126 | 54 | 39 | 31 |
The public health of Geneva altered very much for the better in the course of two centuries from 1561 to 1760. From 1561 to 1600, in every hundred children born, 30·9 died before nine months, on an annual average, and 50 before five years. From 1601 to 1700 the ratios were 27·7 under nine months, and 46 before five years. From 1701 to 1760 the deaths under nine months had fallen to 17·2 per cent., and under five years to 33·6 per cent. (Calculated from a table in the Bibliothèque Britannique, Sciences et Arts, IV. 327.) Thus, with an increasing probability of life, the age-incidence of fatal smallpox may have varied a good deal within the period from 1580 to 1760. It is given by Duvillard separately for the years 1700-1783 (inclusive of measles): during which limited period a smaller ratio died under nine months, and a larger ratio above the age of five years, than in the aggregate of the whole period from 1580 to 1760. Whatever may have been the rule at Geneva, it cannot be applied to English towns; for, while some 30 per cent. of the smallpox deaths were at ages above five in the Swiss city (1700-1783), only 12 per cent. were above five in English towns such as Chester and Warrington in 1773-4.
[830] Pyretologia, 2 vols. Lond. 1692-94, vol. II.
[831] Natural History of Oxfordshire. Oxford, 1677, p. 23.
[832] In his Diary, under the year 1646, homeward journey from Rome.
[833] The physician was “a very learned old man,” Dr Le Chat, who had counted among his patients at Geneva such eminent personages as Gustavus Adolphus and the duke of Buckingham.
[834] Dr Dover has left us an account of Sydenham’s practice in the smallpox as he himself experienced it: “Whilst I lived with Dr Sydenham, I had myself the smallpox, and fell ill on the twelfth day. In the beginning I lost twenty ounces of blood. He gave me a vomit, but I find by experience purging much better. I went abroad, by his direction, till I was blind, and then took to my bed. I had no fire allowed in my room, my windows were constantly open, my bedclothes were ordered to be laid no higher than my waist. He made me take twelve bottles of small beer, acidulated with spirit of vitriol, every twenty-four hours. I had of this anomalous kind to a very great degree, yet never lost my senses one moment.” The Ancient Physician’s Legacy. London, 1732, p. 114.
[835] Scotia Illustrata. Lib. II., cap. 10.